Bacterial Meningitis

Bacterial Meningitis

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23rd February , 2009

An attack of bacterial meningitis can be devastating because most of its victims are usually children or infants . The symptoms of the disease can also be misread leading to improper or inadequate treatment with fatal consequences . As risks of misdiagnosis are many , it is recommended that the services of a physician be sought as quickly as the first symptoms are noticed

Meningitis is the disease caused by the inflammation of

the membranes that surround the brain and the spinal cord (Schultz , 1991 . While the cause of meningitis could be a virus , in the majority of cases it is bacterial . Bacterial meningitis is caused by several agents with the leading one being Haemophilus influenza (Schultz , 1991 . Haemophilus influenzae is a type b ' strain and it is so named because when it was first discovered researchers believed that it was the cause of influenza or flu (Schultz , 1991 , but scientists have since discovered that the flu is actually caused by a virus . A second cause of bacterial meningitis is Neisseria Meningitides or meningococcus (Meningitis 2007 . While this type of bacterial meningitis could affect people of different age groups , it is mostly evident during epidemics and especially in places where people live in congested or crowded environments (Meningitis , 2007 . Recent attacks of meningitis that took place on crowded places are the epidemics in the slums of Brazil that killed 11 ,000 people in 1974...